Malware & Abuse Engineer

Kinsta is one of the top providers of managed hosting for WordPress, with a growing club of 120,000+ businesses including startups, universities, and Fortune 500 firms. We’re motivated by excellent quality and proud to have received a 97% satisfaction rating from our customers.

That's because, to us, each day is a chance to grow. As a team, we continuously inspire each other to learn new and better ways to make an impact. We own our jobs proudly - our leaders don't hold our hands, but they're in our corner whenever we ask for help - and our environment is flexible and remote-first.

As our new Malware & Abuse Engineer, you'll ensure platform integrity by monitoring and remediating malware, spam, and abuse issues, playing a critical role in protecting our customers and keeping them informed every step of the way. The ideal Kinsta Malware & Abuse Engineer is technically knowledgeable, upbeat, professional, curious, and self-motivated.

This role's shift needs are within EMEA time zones (our team uses UTC for scheduling).

What You'll Do

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• Monitor, investigate, and resolve malware, spam, and IP blocklisting issues, as well as DMCA notices, while keeping customers informed.
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• Investigate and resolve malware situations escalated from the Support team.
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• Write and document new malware signature rules for our customer scanning tools.
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• Document processes and workflows for remediating malware infections and requesting the removal of blocklisted IP addresses.
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• Monitor internal tools to identify instances of spam email sending and IP address blocklisting, and alert customers to these issues as necessary.
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• Provide ongoing feedback and work with internal teams to improve malware detection and remediation tools.
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• Receive, validate, and process DMCA notices and counternotices.
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• Monitor internal tools to identify users who misuse Kinsta's platform or use excessive resources.
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• Collaborate with internal teams to gather the information customers need to resolve resource overuse or platform abuse, and monitor customer progress towards resolution.
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• Collaborate with internal teams to recommend plan upgrades for customers facing resource constraints.

What You Bring To The Role

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You are completely fluent in English with excellent written communication skills.

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Experience detecting, investigating, and resolving intricate malware infections present primarily within PHP and JavaScript.

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Experience writing and applying regular expressions.

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Familiarity with WordPress: database structure, file/directory structure, wp-config.php directives, and common malware vectors.

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Comfort working in a command line environment, as much of our tooling is command line based.

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Consummate professionalism: we're a distributed team and we expect you to act like the professional we know you are. That means excellent communication, rock-solid reliability, and the drive to bring your best effort to bear on your work every single day.

Bonus if you have experience with

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• Have previous experience in web hosting and/or WordPress technical support.
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• Have an understanding of and experience with the following technologies: Linux, NGINX, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP, DNS, CDN, and caching (object and page).
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• Have experience investigating, determining the source of, and resolving outbound email spam processes and other platform abuse situations.

Benefits

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• Annual remote expense budget.
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• Flexible PTO.
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• Paid parental leave.
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• Annual professional development budget: available after one year with Kinsta.
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• Sabbatical: available after three years with Kinsta (and every three years thereafter).
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• Location-specific healthcare benefits (includes vision and dental) for employees hired in the USA, UK, Canada, and Hungary.
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• Pension plan for employees hired in the UK, and 401k contributions for employees hired in the USA.